The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Silver certification was awarded during the Greenbuild International Conference and Expo in Phoenix. The gathering draws building industry professionals from around the country and others interested in sustainable building practices. The event was held on November 11-13, 2009 at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Arizona.
The building, located at the corner of Central Avenue and Taylor Mall, is a six-story structure of glass, steel and concrete, built by Sundt Construction Inc. and designed by Steven Ehrlich Associates in partnership with HDR.
Features include the First Amendment Forum, a multi-tiered public space designed for informal daytime gatherings of students and faculty as well as nightly public events; the Cronkite Theater, a 144-seat venue that, along with the Forum, is equipped with ready-for-broadcast high-definition TV cameras; and the Marguerite and Jack Clifford Gallery, a museum-inspired space that displays media artifacts, including several items from Walter Cronkite, the school’s namesake and legendary CBS News anchor, who passed away earlier this year.
Other building features include seven state-of-the-art professional newsrooms and media incubators, seven other digital computer labs, the Sony TV Studio, the Cronkite NewsWatch Studio, two KAET/Eight TV studios, KBAQ radio studio, 17 fully mediated classrooms, nearly 1,000 classroom seats and 280 digital workstations for students. The space is about five times the size of the school’s previous home, Stauffer Hall, which is on ASU’s Tempe campus.
The Cronkite building was constructed with numerous sustainable features, including an east-west orientation for solar control, exterior overhangs and sunscreens for shading windows, energy-saving materials to help optimize building-energy performance, low or no-water landscaping, low-flow plumbing fixtures, building materials that meet LEED low-emitting product requirements and occupancy sensors for lighting control.
In addition, more than 10% of the total building material content was manufactured using recycled materials, said Howard Shugar, vice president and senior project manager for HDR, the architectural firm for the building.
In its report, the USGBC awarded the project 37 points out of 37 submitted for sustainable features, such as being served by 12 bus lines within a quarter-mile of the site, diverting 79.8% of construction waste generated on-site from a landfill, and development and implementation of a green housekeeping program.
The Cronkite building, which also houses KAET/Eight, is the result of an innovative partnership between ASU and the city of Phoenix. It was built with revenue from a $223 million bond approved by Phoenix voters in 2006. The Cronkite building represents the largest single portion of that investment at $71 million.
